The park of Maintenon is in every way admirable, with its _pelouse_, its great border of trees, its waterways and more than thirty bridges. Jean Cottereau himself planned the first vegetable and fruit garden, or _potager_, the same whose successor is the delight of the dwellers at Maintenon to-day. The _parterre_, the Grand Canal and the two avenues of majestic trees were due to the conception of Le Notre, and their effect, as set off by the alleyed forest background and the pillars of the aqueduct of Louis XIV, is something unique. The gardens at Maintenon were perhaps not Le Notre's most famous work but they followed the best traditions of their time, and because of their vast expanse of ornamental water were, in a way, quite unequalled. Ambling off towards the forest is a great avenue flanked with high overhanging shade trees known as the Allee Racine. It gets its name from the fact that the dramatist was wont to take his walks abroad in this direction and woo the muse while he was a guest of Madame de Maintenon. CHAPTER XIX RAMBOUILLET AND ITS FOREST [Illustration: Chateau de Rambouillet] Rambouillet is one of the most famous of the minor royal chateaux of France. Built under the first of the monarchies, in the midst of the vast forest of Yveline, it has always formed a part of the national domain. Even now, under Republican France, it is still the scene of the hunts organized for visiting monarchs, and, within the last half dozen years alone, the monarchs of Spain and Belgium, Italy and England have shot hares and stags and pheasants in company with a Republican president. The occasions have lacked the picturesque costumes of the disciples of Saint Hubert in other times; but the huntsman still winds his horn to the same traditional tune and the banquets given in the chateau on such occasions are, in no small measure, an echo of what has gone before. It was in the old chateau of Rambouillet that Francis I died. In the month of March, 1547, Francis, coming from Chambord in the south, crossed the "accursed bridge" and arrived at the foot of the ivy-grown donjon which one sees to-day, the last remaining relic of the mediaeval fortress. For a year the monarch had led a wandering life, revisiting all the favourite haunts of his kingdom, and, though scarce turned fifty, was prematurely aged and gray. He was lifted tenderly from his royal coach, and by the winding stair, carried slowly to his apartments on the second floor, overlooking the three canals and the "accursed bridge" and the tangled forest beyond. Jacques d'Angennes, to whose ancestors Rambouillet one day belonged, acted as host to his royal master and cared for him as a brother, but Francis was dispirited, and growing weaker every moment. He complained bitterly of the death of his favourite son from the plague, and of that of the gay monarch across the channel, his old friend, Henry VIII of England.